Recent figures show an increase in violent crime among youngsters under the age of 18. Some psychologists claim that the basic reason for this is that children these days are not getting the social and emotional learning they need from parents and teachers. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Sample Response
Brutal crimes committed by the young people are on the rise today and this is a very concerning issue for many. The recent statistic and expert opinions indicate that the increased juvenile crime rate is rooted in the lack of their social and moral learning and lack of proper teaching, training from the parents and teachers. In this essay, I will express my opinion in agreement as I believe that social and emotional learning in childhood from family and schools are not efficient these days.
Obviously, living cost is rapidly increasing and both the parents are working outside to earn their daily bread. As a result, children are unattended for a long time. In addition, parents, for instance, are tired after their hectic work day and busy with their own business. So children hardly get time to interact with their parents. Emotional bonding between the children and parents has become weaker and the number of divorced father or mother is increasing drastically. Moreover, nowadays children are busy with the latest technological devices and thus become less active socially. Most of the parents are busy with their own career and do not restrict the usage of computers and internets. They in many cases do not observe what their children are doing. Furthermore, adolescent age is a crucial period and lack of parental care and support may lead to antisocial behaviour. Lessons and moral values learned in the childhood impact someone’s adulthood and thus the lack of proper parenting lead them to become criminals in even early ages. The children get involved in drugs, crimes and other unlawful activities due to their lack of parental guidelines, sensitive age, depression and bad lifestyle. Furthermore, teachers are often considered as the best mentors for students and their lack of attention, responsibility and quality as teachers often ruin the students. Unfortunately, in this competitive world school curriculum do not consider students aptitude and restrain them within a tight academic schedule. As a result, teenagers easily get distracted from the subject and may turn to be violence person. Secondly, teachers in the past not only focused on the students’ academic learning but also to their moral side. But nowadays, educating the moral side is the least priority with the intention of business in schools. Thus the teenagers are not learning from a mentor but from someone whose main intention is to earn money and save the job.
In conclusion, it is clear that today's paradigm shift in family and school environment is responsible for increased crime rate among the teenagers. Both the parents and the teachers should pay proper attention to the children and should become ideal people from whom children will learn the morality and values of life.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Remove extra article Original: by the young people Suggested revision: by young people Why it matters: The general plural noun phrase does not take 'the' here.
- 2. Use plural noun Original: The recent statistic Suggested revision: Recent statistics Why it matters: The reference is to a body of recent figures, so the plural form is required.
- 3. Join parallel nouns Original: proper teaching, training Suggested revision: proper teaching and training Why it matters: The two parallel nouns need a conjunction rather than a comma.
- 4. Fix agreement and number Original: from family and schools are not efficient Suggested revision: from families and schools is inadequate Why it matters: The singular head noun 'learning' requires a singular verb, and both source nouns should be parallel.
- 5. Use fixed noun phrase Original: living cost is Suggested revision: the cost of living is Why it matters: 'The cost of living' is the standard grammatical phrase.
- 6. Remove extra article Original: both the parents are working outside Suggested revision: both parents are working outside Why it matters: 'Both' directly modifies the plural noun without 'the' in this general statement.
- 7. Add passive verb Original: children are unattended Suggested revision: children are left unattended Why it matters: 'Left unattended' is the correct passive construction for this meaning.
- 8. Use plural category Original: divorced father or mother Suggested revision: divorced parents Why it matters: The plural noun gives a grammatically natural category after 'the number of'.
- 9. Match plural possessors Original: career Suggested revision: careers Why it matters: The plural subject 'parents' normally requires the plural noun 'careers'.
- 10. Use uncountable internet Original: computers and internets Suggested revision: computers and the internet Why it matters: 'Internet' is not used as a plural count noun in this context.
- 11. Use the correct noun Original: adolescent age Suggested revision: adolescence Why it matters: 'Adolescence' is the natural noun for this stage of life.
- 12. Remove extra article Original: learned in the childhood Suggested revision: learned in childhood Why it matters: The general life stage 'childhood' does not take 'the' here.
Suggested Rewrites
- by the young people by young people
- The recent statistic Recent statistics
- proper teaching, training proper teaching and training
- from family and schools are not efficient from families and schools is inadequate
- living cost is the cost of living is
- both the parents are working outside both parents are working outside
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response maintains a clear agreement with the stated explanation and supports it through relevant discussion of parental absence, technology, and schools. Its main limitation is that numerous ideas are compressed into one long body paragraph, while recurrent grammar and word-choice problems reduce precision. The highest-priority improvement is to organise the parental and educational causes into separate, focused paragraphs and edit each for accurate phrasing.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is maintained and supported by relevant explanations concerning both parents and teachers, although some causal claims are broad.
Develop fewer causes more critically by explaining exactly how inadequate social or emotional learning can lead to violent behaviour.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument has a recognisable progression, but the single extended body paragraph and frequent mechanical connectors weaken organisation.
Separate parental and school-related causes into distinct body paragraphs, each with a focused topic sentence and controlled progression.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is sufficiently varied for the topic, but recurrent collocation and word-form errors sometimes make expression awkward.
Replace inaccurate phrases such as violence person, parental guidelines, and internets with precise, natural alternatives.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mixture of simple and complex sentences communicates the main ideas, though errors in agreement, articles, plurals, and sentence structure recur.
Proofread systematically for subject-verb agreement and noun forms, especially in sentences containing several linked clauses.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Recent figures show an increase in violent crime among youngsters under the age of 18. Some psychologists claim that the basic reason for this is that children these days are not getting the social and emotional learning they need from parents and teachers. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.